Saw a discussion of a concept that i've never heard of, which is of course yet another reminder that i'm overdue to renew my Avi 1. From this article in Outside Online:
"Bezubiak performed a more precise search to pinpoint Weselake’s location, then Kuzma drove her probe into the snow and hit him almost immediately. They whipped out their shovels for the hardest, most time-consuming phase of any rescue: digging. They knew Weselake was buried six feet deep and that his chances of survival were falling fast. Instead of using the traditional method to excavate an avalanche victim—digging vertically into the snow along the path of the probe—Bezubiak and Kuzma employed a new technique they’d learned at a three-day course in Fernie less than a month earlier. It was called the V-shaped conveyor method and was reputed to cut excavation time nearly in half. They started downhill of the probe by 1.5 times the burial depth and dug into the snow horizontally instead of vertically, thereby limiting the risk that they’d collapse Weselake’s air pocket. Kuzma started at the front, chopping the hard debris into movable chunks, which Bezubiak then paddled away, as if he was kayaking, which widened the tunnel. When Kuzma got tired, they switched places.
Nearly 23 minutes after the avalanche occurred, they reached Weselake, who was unconscious and laboring through sporadic, shallow breaths. Bezubiak unclipped Weselake’s camera to relieve the pressure on his chest, and a few minutes later he began mumbling. Fifteen minutes after that, he could move. The group eventually evacuated under their own power."
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The article has a lot of discussion on the work of a Swiss avi researcher/educator, Manuel Genswein.
Have others heard of, or even better tried out this shoveling technique?
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